Everybody Pays

by Andrew Vachss

  “Oh shit! I never thought of—”

  “Calm down. Just call your wife. They have to let you use the pay phone here. Tell her where the stuff is—any stuff, you hear what I’m saying?—and tell her to get rid of it.”

  “I dunno, man. She was really mad. Like I killed the kid or something.”

  “It’s worth a try. What you got to lose? Look, promise her anything. Tell her about the booze. Tell her you’re going to get therapy. Just make sure she gets rid of all the stuff. And if she won’t do it, tell your lawyer to get you a power-of-attorney form. That gives him the right to act like he was you, understand? So he can get everything—go right into your house with your key. You got videos too, right?”

  “Yeah. Damn, I’m sure glad I talked to you.”

  “No problem. Look, the important thing is, you never confess, understand? They say confession is good for the soul. That’s cute. Confession, it’s good for the cops, that’s all. Now, your wife, she can’t testify against you, so you’re covered there. But don’t say another word to anyone, all right?”

  “Absolutely.”

  “All right. Then just chill until your lawyer shows. We got this whole place to ourselves.”

  “Why do you think that is? I mean, there’s room enough in here for twenty guys.”

  “The man wants it quiet in here. Same as in the joint. So they keep us separated.”

  “I don’t get—”

  “They don’t lock whites with niggers, man. What’s so hard to understand?”

  “Nothing. I mean—I just thought they didn’t . . .”

  “It ain’t like the movies, pal.”

  “I . . . figured. That’s what those tattoos are for, right? Like, white power?”

  “Yeah. Exactly like that. You want another smoke?”

  “Thanks. I’ll pay you back as soon as Cheryl gets down here with the bail. That is, if she . . .”

  “Don’t sweat it. Like you said, you’re the breadwinner, right?”

  “Right. Hey, what did they bring you back down for?”

  “I told you.”

  “No, I mean, what’d they say you did?”

  “Oh. Another one.”

  “A . . . murder?”

  “Yeah. Four, actually. They say I’m the enforcer for this prison gang. Real science fiction.”

  “You don’t seem too worried about it.”

  “Me? Nah. How many life sentences can you do?”

  “I guess that’s right. Christ, I hope the judge cuts me a play on bail. I don’t see how you did so much time already—it would drive me nuts.”

  “You won’t be doing any time.”

  “You really don’t think so?”

  “I’d bet on it.”

  “Well, you’ve been around a lot; I guess you should know.”

  “Sure. The truth, it always comes out. They’re going to try me for killing four men behind the walls. But they got it wrong.”

  “You didn’t do it?”

  “Sure I did it, pal. They just got the number wrong.”

  “Huh?”

  “Those pay phones, they’re really something. You can just reach out and talk to anyone. Even someone you haven’t heard from in years.”

  “I don’t—”

  for Sergeant Mike McNamara

  HIT MAN

  “Don’t you want to know why?” the chubby brunette asked. She was looking across at me, her elbows on the little round table in the corner of the bar, hands clasped under her chin. A damsel in distress. In case that act wouldn’t fly, she moved her elbows closer to center, displaying even more creamy cleavage. Or maybe she just believed in insurance.

  Her husband sure did. One point five, the finger had told me, and all hers—they had no kids.

  “Anyone who’d want to know that would be a cop,” I told her softly.

  Her pale face went chalky.

  “They don’t have to prove motive in court,” I said, “but they always want it when the defendant isn’t the one who did it themselves, understand?”

  “I . . . think so.”

  “Let’s say, just talking hypothetically, a woman’s getting beat up by her husband. She doesn’t know what to do. She tells her story to a guy she meets in a bar. That guy, he takes matters into his own hands. And the husband, he gets killed. Maybe it wasn’t supposed to happen that way. Just a taste of his own medicine that went wrong. Maybe the wife’s a suspect. Maybe she’s not. Kind of depends on what kind of life the husband was living himself, understand?”

  “He—”

  “Hypothetically, let’s say the husband had a drug habit. Or a lot of gambling debts. Maybe he was playing around with a woman and her boyfriend got jealous. Maybe he’s got a thing for hookers. Who knows? There’s lots of reasons for a guy to get killed. Now, if his wife has a rock-solid alibi for when it goes down, she doesn’t become a suspect automatically . . . but the cops’ll still want to talk to her. You with me so far?”

  “Yes. But—”

  Christ, she was a dimwit. “Hypothetically speaking, if there was, say, a big life-insurance policy, then no question: The wife is a suspect. Now the cops care about a motive. I mean, the money, there’s a motive, sure. But plenty of guys carry life insurance and they don’t get whacked by their wives. Now, for the cops, greed, that’s plenty of motive all by itself. But that won’t fly with a lot of juries. They always want some more, and the DA knows it. So the cops always ask around, see if there isn’t anything else they can throw in. You understand what I’m talking about?”

  “Sure. And I—”

  I held up one hand, palm out like a traffic cop. “Another thing about cops: they’re always wired. You know what that means?”

  “Like on TV? With a little—?”

  “Right. Doesn’t take up any more space than . . . this,” I said, showing her the wireless disk I held in my cupped hand.

  Her mouth made a nice round O! but she didn’t say a word. Finally.

  “Now get up,” I told her, “and go over to the pay phone. Bring back the Yellow Pages.”

  She did it without another word, handing it to me. I opened it up, turned to the listing for Motels. “Trust, it’s a funny thing,” I told her. “People trust too easy. And there’s no excuse for it. Not when they’re about to go into something serious.” I turned the book around so she could see the pages. “Look what’s there. Motel listings. Must be a few hundred of them, just on one page alone. And there’s a lot of pages, right? What I’m going to do is turn it around again, like this.” I showed her what I meant, so she could read the print. “Then I’m going to turn to the next couple of pages, like this.” I did that too, not looking down, my eyes right on hers. “Then what you’re going to do is take this pen”—I handed her a red felt-tip—“close your eyes, and just make a circle, a little circle, anywhere you want on the page, okay? That’s the motel we’re going to go to, you and me.”

  “Why are—?”

  “That way, neither of us could know the place in advance,” I told her, ignoring the question she really wanted to ask. “Nobody makes a phone call. Nobody goes to the bathroom. We stay right in each other’s sight every second, understand?”

  “Yes, but—”

  “Sure,” I told her reasonably, like I knew what she was going to ask. “There could be a backup team in place. And we could get followed. But all they’d know is where we ended up. Not which room. And even if they could find that out, no way they could plant a listening device inside in advance, understand? Now: You ready to go?”

  She just nodded. Then she closed her eyes and made a little circle on the page. When we looked, she had covered about three different ones. I pointed to the one in the middle. She nodded. We got up to leave.

  In the parking lot, we went over to my car. I opened the trunk, took a pair of suitcases out. Hers was bigger than mine, a nice blue one. I looked at her. She hesitated. “Your car,” I told her.

  As soon as she got into the car and turned the key, I switch
ed on the radio, holding my finger to my lips. She didn’t say a word.

  The motel was out on the highway, pretty close to the airport. Middle-class place, mostly for business travelers, not a quick-trick joint. We registered as Mr. and Mrs. Albert Kowalski.

  Once we got into the room, I put the suitcases on the bed and opened them. Then I gestured that she should look inside, satisfy herself there were no microphones. She did it, sort of.

  Then I started talking off my clothes. She just stood there, not moving. When I was stripped, I stood next to her, twisted my body a bit, then turned around, holding my hands over my head the way the cops want you to do when they pat you down. “No wire,” I mouthed to her, not making a sound, but letting her read my exaggerated lip movement. She didn’t react. “No mi-cro-phone,” I mouthed again, even slower. She nodded. Then I turned my back on her and went into the bathroom. I opened both the hot and cold jets on the shower to the max. It made a noise like a waterfall.

  I motioned for her to come close. I didn’t even have to tell her to take her clothes off.

  I whispered in her ear, under the roar of the shower. “Nobody could pick this up,” I said, putting my arms around her. “It’s safe, understand?”

  “Yes,” she whispered.

  “It has to look like a robbery,” I told her. “Does he have a job, or does he work for himself?” I already knew all this from the finger who’d tipped me to this score, but I needed to see if she was going to be truthful with me.

  “He owns a jewelry store,” she said. “That’s how I found out.”

  “Found out what?”

  “Remember what you said before? About the kind of life he has? That’s so funny. Like this—with you—was meant to be. I mean, that is what’s going on. There’s a woman. He gave her . . . gifts, I guess. Right from inventory. I know because his father complained. It’s really his father’s business, but he’s retired. His father, I mean. Anyway, the old man comes in once in a while, just to look things over. We were having dinner at the house when he told John that there was some shrinkage. I didn’t even know what that meant. His father said there were a couple of items listed on the inventory sheet but they weren’t in stock. John told him he was probably wrong, and his father got real mad. He said John had no head for business and one of the stockboys or a clerk or something had probably just slipped it in his pocket. It happens all the time. John told him, okay, he would take care of it. And he fired Rubén. That was this Puerto Rican kid who worked there. So I figured he found out who took the stuff and that was it.”

  “How did you find out what he was doing with it?” I asked her. If she noticed my hand patting her hip, she didn’t say anything.

  “He has business dinners. A lot. He always did, so I didn’t pay any attention. But one day, I was downtown shopping and I thought I’d drop in, maybe surprise him and we could have lunch. He wasn’t there. Marie—she works the front counter, she’s been there for years—said he had an appointment. Well, I was already there, so I went back into his office to call my girlfriend and see if she wanted to have lunch. That’s when I saw it—his American Express bill for the month. He has a corporate card. There was maybe seven or eight or even more charges from this one restaurant. At least that’s what I thought it was. But they were huge. I mean, the cheapest one was over three hundred dollars! It stuck in my mind. I looked up the restaurant in the phone book and there wasn’t any! So now I was really curious. I asked my girlfriend had she ever heard of it. She hadn’t either. I was going to just ask him, but, I mean, I knew something was fishy. So I . . . followed him one day. Right in the middle of the day. You know where he went? This place called the Playpen. I could see it was a strip club, even from the outside. But I didn’t go in. You know what I did then?”

  “No,” I whispered, feeling her plump little breasts against my chest, my right hand on her thigh, just below her butt.

  “I have a nephew. Michael. He’s just a kid. In college. Anyway, for his birthday, I told him he could take a couple of friends to the Playpen. On me. I gave him my Visa card and told him to have a good time. Oh boy, was he excited! And I was too—when I got the bill. It didn’t say ‘Playpen’ on it. You know what? It said the name of this so-called restaurant. Can you imagine? He was taking his little—whatever it was you get in there—as a business expense!”

  “A lot of men do it,” I told her.

  “What? Pay for whores with a business account, or cheat on their wives?”

  “Both,” I told her, pressing against the base of her spine with my thumb. “You got dynamite proof. And a nice IRS problem for him too. Why don’t you just divorce him?”

  “Because his father made me sign one of those pre-nuptial things. If I divorce him, I only get a little bit. Almost nothing. We’ve been married nearly eight years. And we don’t have kids. He’d love it if I’d divorce him. He told me so. I mean, I told him. I told him everything. If he wants that tramp so bad, he could just . . . go.”

  “What makes you sure it’s just one woman?” I asked her, slipping my knee between her thighs. “Strip clubs, they have new girls every day.”

  “The jewelry,” she said. “He might be giving cash to any of those sluts. But jewelry—that’s what you give someone you . . . You know what I mean.”

  “Sure,” I told her. “But if that was the case, he could just divorce you, right?”

  “No, he can’t. I mean, not without something against me. I went to a lawyer. He has to have grounds to divorce me. And he has nothing. So we’re both stuck.”

  “And you want a way out, huh?”

  “Will you do it?” she asked.

  “I don’t know. Depends on . . .”

  “What?” she breathed into my ear, her hands clasped behind my back to steady herself.

  “Money, for one. It’s expensive to set something like this up. And it’s harder when the guy’s crazy.”

  “Crazy? John isn’t crazy.”

  “He must be,” I said softly. “Who in their right mind would be spending money on hookers when he’s got all this at home?” I squeezed her bottom a little to show her what I meant.

  “Oh. Stop that! I mean—John’s like an . . . addict or something.”

  “What’s he addicted to?” I asked, cupping her right breast in my hand and lifting it slightly. “Silicon?”

  “What’re you trying to do, raise my self-esteem?” She giggled.

  “Speaking of raising something . . .” I said, guiding her hand down.

  She was flushed and sweaty from the shower steam. It didn’t take long.

  After that, I met her a bunch of times. To set things up, make sure everything went perfect. Sometimes she picked the motel, sometimes I did. We would talk in the shower, then use the bed.

  The last time we got together, she gave me the ten thousand. A down payment. I was going to get a hundred grand when I took her husband out.

  That’s not my idea of a hit. Yolanda had told me all about her husband. She’s a stripper at the Playpen. And she fingers jobs for me once in a while. Yolanda and me are together, but I’m not the jealous type.

  The husband’s paying a quarter-mil for the videotape. There’s no words on it, but you can see her face clear enough. And everything else. More than enough for him to get that divorce.

  I’m not going to cheat the brunette, though. Old John’s a dead man. And it is going to look like a robbery that went wrong.

  Maybe a year or so from now. After he’s been married to Yolanda for a while.

  for Big Wayne

  SEARCHER

  It’s hard to travel so much without a horse. But I have to keep looking. And if I stop long enough to earn money for a horse, I could be too late.

  It would take me a long time to earn money, anyway. I don’t know how to do nothing except lift things or pull stuff. I never learned no trade. I knowed I was bonded out when I was a little kid. The preacher told me I was going to learn a trade. But all I learned was how hard the whip cut into m
y back when I didn’t pull the plow straight and deep enough. I learned that part good. A woman in one of the places I looked in, she saw my back. She thought I had been in prison, to get whipped like that.

  But I was never in no prison. I was a farm boy. But I wasn’t nobody’s born boy—I was a work animal. They worked me all the time, except for Sundays, of course. I went to church then.

  The people who owned me, everyone told them what good Christians they was for taking me in and treating me like I was one of their own.

  I never said nothing.

  I don’t talk much.

  But I learned.

  I don’t drink. I don’t use tobacco. I can’t read, but I can understand when people talk. And I can talk myself. All I usually have to tell folks is that I can work. I tell them how much work I can do, and they laugh at me. Then they see me do it, and they don’t laugh no more.

  That’s the way I go from place to place. Working. Sometimes people will give me a ride. For nothing, I mean. I always offer to do some work, but some of them, they just let me ride along without doing nothing. One whole family, they was moving west to homestead. I rode with them a long way. But when they turned north, I had to get off.

  Most of them, they do want me to do something. There’s always something to do.

  I can’t fix a wagon, or shoe a horse, or shoot a gun. I never learned none of that stuff. But I can lift anything. And I never get tired.

  I wouldn’t let nobody whip me no more. I made them stop on the farm when I got big enough. But then I had to go. That same night. Anyway, nobody even tries anymore—you can’t whip someone if you don’t own them. It’s better not to be a kid. Or any kind of slave.

  I don’t steal neither. I am trying to be a good man. I am trying to find the answer to my question. Once I find it, I know I will be a good man for certain.

  But I’m not sure where to look. I mean, I know where to look, but not exactly the right place. So I keep looking.

  It’s hard to travel around like I do. But I met an Indian once. An old one. He had a cart he was trying to pull. His horse had died. He wanted to get home, but he had to bring his stuff with him. So I pulled the cart. It wasn’t nothing. I mean, it had wheels and everything, not like plowing a field. The old Indian, he asked me how I got so strong. I told him. He didn’t say nothing.